Wireless and wired connections, such as Wi-Fi, cellular (3G/LTE) or Ethernet may be used for internet connectivity to handle our needs for file transfer, browsing the internet, social networking, email/messaging, sending photos to each other, audio/video calling and e-commerce. It is curious that when we pass a printed photo to someone next to us in the real world we just hand it over to them but when we want to share a digital photo from our smartphone to someone standing in front of us, we typically send it across the internet, creating copies along the way. This approach lacks privacy and can be slow and costly when uploading to cloud storage or a web service via a 3G/LTE cellular connection. Further, it seems counter-intuitive to send a photo to the internet and back when we are simply trying to move it from one of our devices to another device physically located next to or in close proximity with each other. Emailing a photo or file to yourself feels as strange as sending a letter to ourselves. For short distance communication, we typically use a USB cable to connect our smartphone to our computer, or BLUETOOTH®/NFC for light data transfers for example for streaming audio or transferring business cards. A USB cable is just not as user friendly as not needing one at all, whereas BLUETOOTH®/NFC are not fast enough to transfer rich media such as photos and videos. Accordingly, technical problems exist in the conventional techniques for exchanging data amongst users and devices.
The subject matter of the following documents is incorporated herein by reference.
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